#Cordblood Used to Treat Type 1 #Diabetes

An article posted in Medical News Today called, "Type 1 Diabetes Reversed With Stem Cells From Cord Blood", discussed new research being done at the University of Illinois at Chicago, regarding cordblood stem cells and patients with type 1 diabetes.

The research suggests that stem cells from cord blood have helped "re-educate" the T cells of people with type 1 diabetes so that their pancreas started producing insulin again, thereby reducing the amount of insulin needed to be injected into the patient.

The "Stem Cell Educator Therapy" program, is a procedure whereby the diabetic patient’s blood is circulated through a closed-loop system that separates T cells from the whole blood and co-cultures them with cord blood stem cells from healthy donors for two to three hours before returning the “re-educated T-cells” to the patient’s circulation.

This program led by Dr. Yong Zhao, a speaker at the upcoming World Cord Blood Congress event, taking place in Boston September 2012, has proven successful in improving autoimmune control in these patients with type 1 diabetes.

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When 11-year-old Barrett’s parents were told that their son was among the nearly 3 million children in the United States diagnosed with type-one diabetes one of the first calls they made was to a research university. They told the university about Barrett’s diagnosis and that they had saved Barrett’s cord blood when he was born. Very soon Barrett was enrolled in a clinical trial testing the ability of umbilical cord blood infusions to slow down the progression of type-one diabetes. After a one-time infusion of his own cord blood, Barrett’s need for insulin dropped from 30 units per day to 10 units per day, and two years following his diagnosis his body continues to produce some insulin. Researchers are hopeful that cord blood infusions have the potential to become a standard treatment for children with type-one diabetes.http://cordadvantage.com